The world is in constant need of help. Therefore the need to promote social entrepreneurship ideas for social impact cannot be overemphasized.
While it is good to start a business for profit motive, many less privileged individuals are at the mercy of social entrepreneurs who are driven by a passion to solve social problems.
If you have a desire to create a change, building a business to solve a social need is the right way to go.
I have carefully highlighted some inspiring social business ideas that address diverse social and environmental problems.
Here are social entrepreneurship ideas you can start with:
1. School for Less Privileged Kids
According to UNESCO, about 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million lower secondary school age, and 138 million upper secondary age are out of school.
Therefore, starting a school for underprivileged kids is one of the best social entrepreneurship ideas you can think of.
For children who live in slums or locations affected by disasters, having access to proper education is a dream come true. And you can be the answer to their prayer.
As a social entrepreneur, you may not need to start big. You can create a school for less privileged kids all by yourself and charge little and affordable fees.
In addition, you can seek external support to reach more kids, employ more teachers and provide teaching and educational materials like textbooks, bags, sandals, among others, to aid their learning.
2. Community Workshop
Another critical social entrepreneurship idea is establishing a training center for practical skills like sewing, leatherworking, weaving, sculpture, and the likes.
Unemployed individuals, particularly in developing and underdeveloped countries seek opportunities to learn a craft. That is to say; these societies are fertile grounds for a community workshop.
As a skilled entrepreneur, start by teaching others your craft and charging a decent and affordable fee to train them. When they are skilled enough to produce their crafts, help them package and market their craft to physical and e-commerce stores. The profit realized can then be split to serve as a means of income generation for you and them simultaneously.
This way, they can make money from their craft to become self-reliant and valuable to society.
SEE: Places to Sell Crafts Online
3. Micro Lending for SMEs
Most of the time, it is not the lack of ideas that stops people from being entrepreneurs. Instead, it is the unavailability of funds that is a major setback to their ambition.
Therefore, if you are looking at what social entrepreneurship ideas to start, creating a platform where individuals can lend money directly to start a business would bring development and hope to such communities.
Also, these loans should come with low interest rates to enable borrowers to pay back easily. In addition, you may train them on how to manage small businesses. Furthermore, create a system to monitor how disbursed loans are used by borrowers so as to avoid mismanagement of funds.
In the end, you are building a sustainable business while helping people become valuable to the community rather than liabilities.
SEE: Businesses with Low Startup Costs
5. Social products and employment for the underserved
You don’t have to be a manufacturer before you employ people. You could source for good social products like clean cooking stoves or affordable solar power systems and employ unemployed individuals to market the products in their communities.
With every sale, you can pay them a commission, to motivate them to work better. Through this, you are promoting the businesses of social product manufacturers and providing a means of livelihood for unemployed people.
6. Social Supermarket
Several individuals in many developing countries of the world can barely feed once a day. Because of their financial limitations, they lack access to safe, sufficient, and nutritious food.
A thriving social entrepreneurship idea will be opening a social supermarket that sells food at pretty steep discounted prices in such low-income communities.
Food companies with surplus food may donate or sell cheaply to you instead of allowing the food to go to waste. You then sell to people by adding a decent extra amount as your profit.
As a result, you are helping organizations minimize wastage and helping many people to fight hunger simultaneously.
7. Used Textbooks for Social Change
Maybe you have a passion for education, but you don’t want to start a school for less privileged kids. A significant social entrepreneurship idea that you can engage in is collecting used students’ textbooks through donations from student clubs or groups.
After that, re-sell to students in colleges and universities at discounted prices. A percentage of the profit realized from sales could be given to school groups that made donations.
8. Care Home for Old Adults
As people grow older, they tend to need more care and attention. With old age comes body fatigue and diverse sicknesses such as dementia, hepatitis, and high blood pressure. In other words, they are at the most fragile period of their lives.
Therefore, they may need to move into full-time or residential care to be better cared for at some point. And since most of their family members do not have the luxury of time to cater to them, building a home for old adults and charging a fee for your services is a brilliant idea.
Apart from providing old adults with better care, home care also offers them a community of old people that they can relate to and call family. This way, they will feel safe, loved, and healthier.
Also, you could seek donations from external sources to help reach more old adult populace and improve the standard of living for them within the care home.
9. Restaurant for a Social Cause
Rehabilitation could come in the form of employment for former addicts, convicts, and those recovering from some form of illness. But, many organizations refuse to employ these individuals because of their past. As a result, many of them go back to their old ways.
One of the best social entrepreneurship ideas to make them useful is opening a restaurant that employs them as workers.
By so doing, you are giving them a chance at life again and helping them become better individuals.
SEE: Food Business Ideas
10. Low-Cost Mobile Housing
An average of 2.7 million people becomes displaced from their homes every year. As a result, the need for low-cost mobile houses for people in areas prone to disasters is expedient.
Therefore, you could design mobile micro houses and sell them to individuals within these locations. In addition, these houses should be affordable, environmentally friendly, and durable.
11. Supply aggregator
In this case, the beneficiaries themselves lack the critical mass to bring a product to market. For example, a farmer with a few cows produces insufficient milk to make cheese and can’t sell locally because his other farmer friends also have cows and make cheese themselves.
As a social entrepreneur, you can buy the excess milk from all the farmers in the area to manufacture the cheese and then sell it to a broader market. The same logic may apply to cocoa farmers.
12. Farm Hostel for underprivileged children
With the high population of displaced and homeless children, social entrepreneurship ideas to mitigate these teething problems are fast rising.
One of which is the development of farms like poultry, piggery, or rabbitry and employing underprivileged children to work and earn wages.
Furthermore, you could provide shelter for them while being employed on your farm. This way, the kids would be able to fend for themselves and afford school.
SEE: How to Make Money With Farm Animals
13. Mini-Grid and Solar Power
In regions that frequently experience droughts and power outages, a thriving social entrepreneurship idea would be to convert the excess sun to a power source.
The mini-grid and solar power would serve as an electricity generator from the sun and supply electricity to the local communities within the region. Through the power generated, you could also have a borehole drilled and provide water around the neighborhoods.
However, achieving a task like this is arduous and requires very high capital, but its realization would mean hope and peace for these communities and bring huge economic benefit for you.
FAQs
What is a social entrepreneurship business?
A social entrepreneurship business is a business built to solve a social problem and create change. Microlending firms, home care centers, and restaurants for social change are examples of social entrepreneurship businesses.
Why is social entrepreneurship important?
Social entrepreneurship breeds businesses designed to solve critical societal problems and foster positive and social change.
Unlike traditional businesses, social entrepreneurship businesses solve a social need.
Conclusions
Seeking to build a profit-oriented business is good but becoming a social entrepreneur is better. Thankfully, this post has shown insights into several social problems that social entrepreneurs can look into to effect change.
Some of the social entrepreneurship ideas listed are capital intensive and need a substantial amount of money, while others could be started with little or no capital.
Of the ideas listed, I’ll suggest that you start your social entrepreneurship journey by setting up a school in developing or disaster-affected areas. Children are the leaders of tomorrow, and the future lies in their hands. Hence, they need proper education to become responsible and thoughtful individuals.
Also, you do not need significant capital to start up. But, if you have reasonable access to funding, you should look into providing a mini-grid and solar system to generate electricity and water supply for communities within your neighborhood.
Lastly, as a technical and innovative individual, start by training the unemployed populace within your community to become technically skilled so they also can make money for themselves.
Perhaps, you are interested in starting a profitable business, you can check out the list of 500+ great business Ideas you can start today.
I hope this post helped.
Thanks for reading.
